1/ This is a story of political arrogance The revolutionaries overestimated the power of science And underestimated the *stickiness* of religion One hour = 100 minutes One min = 100 seconds New year shifted from 1st Jan to 22nd Sept A radical attempt to redefine time itself

2/ The French revolutionaries adopted a new calendar for three reasons: - To eliminate religious consciousness from the French society - To make time more “rational” - To announce the birth of an egalitarian era In their zeal they forgot an important factor: human nature

3/ From 1793 to 1805 in France, 1 week had 10 days The 7th day, traditionally a holiday - “holy day” - became a typical week day Every 10th day was the rest day John Quincy Adams called this change not just "irreligious" but also "superficially frivolous" and "coarsely vulgar"

4/ Sociologist Zerubavel notes that the 10-day week was meant to disrupt the “traditional, sacred seven-day cycle” Purpose was to disorient people and make them lose track of “Sunday” That is, the day for going to Church And having a weekly sitdown with the divine

5/ The French Revolutionary Calendar was designed by the top experts of the day The chief designer: CG Romme (Physics professor) Mathematicians & astronomers chipped in Tradition/old habits didn’t matter The designers answered “solely to the principles of Reason and Science”

6/ Sociologist Zerubavel: “The Revolutionary Calendar was introduced in an age which advocated the total obliteration of the old order in the name of progress and modernity: the beginning of the new Republican Era marked the total discontinuity between past and present.”

7/ Every calendar has “critical dates” which are suffused with a symbolic importance The Revolutionaries changed the first day of the year from January 1 to 22nd September - the day of the “foundation of the French Republic” Society was to spin not around religion but politics

8/ Days which had a unique flavor due to their religious significance like “the saints' days, Sunday and the Church's religious holidays” were abolished. Each day became mathematically and symbolically alike. Differences were to be erased - whether among people or on the calendar

9/ By adopting calendrical rhythms alien to the rest of the world The French created artificial barriers to communication, understanding, and ultimately trade How would you fix delivery schedules with a country whose calendar is untranslatable into yours?

10/ Imagine you’re a French peasant in 1793 The revolutionaries have not just beheaded the King and slaughtered their own But have also made the week 10 days long The day is now 10 hours, not 24 Your old clocks - and your old instincts - need to be thrown out

11/ By denouncing all authority as arbitrary, the revolutionary finally harms himself On what grounds will HE govern once the king is gone? In hindsight we can see the “boomerang effect” of the Calendar redesign If the old dogmas were random Why are the new ones any better?

12/ The people HATED the new Calendar It made them work for 9 days straight instead of 6 Plus it was confusing Special clocks were made to translate the Revolutionary calendar into the Gregorian calendar and back People’s age-long habits were redesigned without their CONSENT

13/ STALIN imposed a new calendar too The week was cut to 5 days to eliminate the holiday of Sunday Days were assigned colors, and workers were given colors When it was your colored day, you took a day off Families and friends had different colors and so they never hung out

Here’s the French Revolutionary Calendar. Designed by the biggest scientific minds of the time. A failed dream and a symbolic warning. An attempt to restructure time by politics instead of the sacred. Reasonable, rational, and hence doomed. An emblem to the madness of equality.

Here’s the man who ended the tyranny of artificial time and took his country back to the Gregorian calendar On this day, 217 years ago Common Napoleon W

Balzac, the famous French novelist, was a big fan of Napoleon He systematically went through 100s of Napoleon’s speeches & public gazettes And collected his most interesting aphorisms and maxims Here are Napoleon’s best insights on war, love, and more: https://oldbooksguy.substack.c...

Enjoyed this thread? Appreciate your time! Pls RT! 👇🏻 https://x.com/oldbooksguy/stat...

Here's to aiming high in 2023, but not so high that we try to radically redefine the definition and experience of time itself

@oldbooksguy This is interesting.

@PapooseLoose 🥂

@oldbooksguy Interesting read, never knew this about history. I will definitely check out more of this story. TYVM

@CoreyHughes2012 🥂

@oldbooksguy The only good thing that came from the French Revolution was Napoleon

@oldbooksguy @Readwiseio save thread

@oldbooksguy Monsters from the Id by EMJ. Immense understanding of the french revolution

@oldbooksguy Very interesting story. Here's another calendar-related story, including advice as to how one sells complex ideas to politicians: https://chicagoboyz.net/archiv...

@oldbooksguy It was all based and they just needed to do it for longer than like two years for it to stick

@oldbooksguy There's a reason Napoleon is remembered as a heroic figure by the French whereas Robespierre is not.

@oldbooksguy This methodic lunacy, which began with Descartes, and was channel through the likes of Condorcet and unlimited progress, continued into Comte's positivism, Marx, Julian Huxley's transhumanism, amongst others. "Jacobins were nothing but Cartesians taking to the streets."

@oldbooksguy Super interesting. So who ruled over France before Napoleon? Intellectuals? The Jacobins? Because you wrote Napolean ended the new calendar. I was wondering how long into his rule it was in practice before he got rid of it. Thanks

@oldbooksguy They renamed the months, too - much to the glee of satirists. I can’t find the original article wherein I’d learned this, but here’s the info from elsewhere.

@oldbooksguy It's not even "logical" it's just stupid. Base 12 instead of base 10 for the hours of the day makes sense. It's not arbitrary or religious it's based on ancient Babylonian mathematics which had a base 12 system for everything. Why is base 10 more logical? It isn't.

@oldbooksguy I think the Revolution collapsed from having to remember all that shit

@oldbooksguy A hubristic disaster indeed. But at least we got to keep the metrical system!